


A New Dawn

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24545653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: For the 100fandoms prompt: key. In those hours when Willow's malfunctioning spell had caused everyone to forget who they were, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing for Dawn, because in that time, she was able to be a regular girl, to forget she was ever the Key.
Kudos: 3
Collections: The 100 Multifandom Challenge





	A New Dawn

In a way, those few hours when Dawn had had no real idea who she was had actually been easier for her. Because in those few hours, despite having no sense of her real identity, she was also able to be a regular human being, with no idea that she was once the Key, sent there for Buffy to protect.

Glory’s gone now, she’s no longer an issue. In theory, Dawn should be able to relax, to get on with her life as the fifteen year old girl that only the Scoobies know she’s not, and they still treat her as one, just Buffy’s sister who’s always been part of their lives. No one refers to her as the Key any more, yet part of her has never been able to forget.

If Dawn had thought of it earlier, she wonders if she would have ever asked Willow to use that forgetting spell so that she and the others would forget that she was the Key. Maybe it would have even been better if Willow had used it on Dawn to make her forget that fight with Tara as well; at least that way Dawn wouldn’t have been able to mention the fight to Tara and cause her to realise what had happened. And if it had worked the way it was intended to on Buffy, if she had forgotten that she’d been in heaven, maybe things would have been better. Maybe Buffy would have wanted to be here, would have wanted to spend some time with Dawn. But after seeing not only the way it had just gone wrong erasing all of their memories, the fight Tara had with Willow about it, and hearing what Xander, Anya and especially Tara had to say about Willow using magic too much, she now realises it’s for the best that she never asked that.

Tara had used the argument with Willow that she couldn’t understand how Willow could have interfered with her memory after everything that had happened with Glory. If anything, Dawn had felt that she was at least in part responsible, since trying to find her was the only reason Glory had crossed paths with Tara in the first place. And she’d look at Buffy, knowing now that Willow and the others had pulled her out of heaven, and Dawn would feel responsible for the fact that that had happened at all because the only reason Buffy had ever died was because she had been protecting Dawn.

She hasn’t discussed this with anyone, although she knows that if she ever did say anything to Buffy, or Tara, or Xander, they would probably argue that Dawn wasn’t responsible, that she hadn’t even known she was the Key, and any one of them would have said that getting Willow to do any kind of forgetting spell on Dawn, or on anyone come to that, was a very bad idea. In her logical mind, Dawn gets that. And most of the time, it’s easy to pretend. But sometimes, something will come along to remind her, like someone sharing a memory of something Angel or Oz or Cordelia had done, and even though Dawn has a memory of it, she knows she wasn’t really part of that story, or even something as stupid as her birthday, which Dawn knows is a bogus date, and it will remind her all over again of the truth that for those few hours, she could forget.


End file.
